A wrong but useful model

George Box – statistician by day, snappy sound-bite creator by night – said “all models are wrong, but some are useful.”

That’s already helpful. Frameworks and dogmas help frame our world, but none is the truth, only a pathway to get a little closer to what really matters.

Me? I’m looking for models that might help me get closer to a life with more meaning and more impact. I suspect you might be too, and if you are then here’s a model you might find useful.

Three buckets

Everything you do falls into one of three buckets…

Bad Work: The mind-numbing, soul-sucking, life-draining work. The work that – if you stopped and thought about it – you’d say to yourself: This is my one and precious life. What the heck am I doing? You probably know exactly what I’m talking about as soon as I mentioned it.

Good Work: Best summed up as your job description – whether or not you hold down a regularly paying job. It’s the day-to-day stuff, the work that keeps you busy and perhaps just a little overwhelmed. It’s an important part of your life, and you’ll always want to have some Good Work as part of it.

The challenge is that it can be too much of your life. Good Work has a strong gravity to it that keeps pulling us in, keeps us immersed and busy, and keeps us stuck in something of a comfortable rut.

Here’s a test. If you get to the end of your busy working week and, reflecting back on what’s happened over the week, you think to yourself, “I can’t remember a darn thing I did!” then you’ve more than likely got too much Good Work in your life.

Great Work. This is the work you hoped you’d signed up for in the first place. Work that has meaning, work that has impact, work that both reflects who you are and stretches you. It’s the work that you’re proud about, it’s the work that taps right into the Positively Positive vibe.

It’s not about quality

Notice that these definitions are not about the quality of your work. Ironically, you probably do your Bad Work really really well. They’re about the impact and the meaning of your work. That’s a big difference.

It might remind you of Peter Drucker’s words, who pointed out there is a huge difference between doing the thing right and doing the right thing.

What’s your Great Work mix?

A powerful starting place can be to figure out what’s reality for you through this model right now. So why not doing a quick audit and see where you’re at with this.

Draw a circle, and divide it into three sections that represent how much Bad Work, Good Work and Great Work you have in you life. If you want to make it more powerful, add an example of each type of work you’re currently doing.

There’s no right answer here. There’s no “magic formula” for the best combination of Good Work and Great Work. (Clearly, you don’t want any Bad Work.)

More useful is this question: What does that tell you about you?

And do you have too much Great Work in your life? (I didn’t think so.)

Once you see were you are now, you’re in a position to starting asking yourself, “What (if anything) needs to change here?”

It’s a good post. But what is your real purpose? Are you trying to motivate people or make them feel bad? I’m 51 years old, and I don’t think I’ve ever done anything “great.” I’ve been a special ed teacher, a court reporter, I know braille, and I love kids. The things I have done, that may have helped people, anyone that I may have touched along the way . . . I have done what I think is EXPECTED of me, expected of any human being. That doesn’t make me great. What do YOU consider great?

I don’t think I will ever be a great person, and that is okay with me. “Great” writers and inventors and so forth need people like me to vacuum the floors, or change the light bulbs, or whatever, or they wouldn’t have enough time to pursue their dreams. Smaller jobs, smaller goals, do not equal smaller people. You know?

Guest

I disagree with your definition of “Great” being reserved for writers or inventors or those types . I see “Great” being defined in the context of your own values and goals, the sense of living your self fully, developing your capacities and talents. Your life’s activities seem very impactful to me, but what outsiders think doesn’t really matter. We all need to figure out who we are and live that fully, whatever it is.

Jen

So simple and clarifying, thank you! I know my current career is no longer right for me, but am stymied as to what new direction to go in.

Each night I make a light plan for my next day’s activities, both work and non-work related, and review the current day’s plan. As I make the next day’s plan, I try to say to myself, “This is what tomorrow will look like. Ideally, how would you like it to be?” in an effort to bring home the possibility of change and stimulate ideas for what to do next.

I’m going to use your classification system to categorize my day’s activities as I review them each night, which will quickly bring to light where to begin making small adjustments. I’ve made a lot of big changes in my life, but mostly all of them were made in the context of small adjustments adding up over time.